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Mark Gibbs writes "Shiver me timbers: Antigua and Barbuda's 'WTO Remedies Implementation Committee', is said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised earlier this year by the WTO ... Additionally, an announcement regarding the opening of tenders for private sector participation in the operating of the platform should be announced shortly. Arghhh ... matey!" See also this Slashdot post (from 2007) for some background.

Sounds less like 'piracy', and more like early America, where our forebears had little stake in maintaining the seemingly unjust control of foreign interests, but much interest in creating a large body of works that the public could use to generate culture in this new world.

I'm sure there were a lot of folks an ocean away decrying the 'free ride' those Americans were taking then too - but those resources had some heavy work to do, and it would rightly seem absurd at the to pay several times the cost of production for a 'licensed' book at the end of the day. What parts of culture we were able to 'steal' helped make us diverse and strong - and I don't blame any developing nation for wanting to repeat that, either officially, or unofficially like most nations.

US property laws remind me of a novice, power-mad AD&D DM. After too many rules about what players can do and too many "whups, didn't search for that piece of glass, ahaha, party dead, roll up new characters", the rest of the people in the game just shrugged, picked up their dice and paper, and went elsewhere.

Fair IP laws are one thing. However, when it gets to the point where one has to fight IP law to publish/sell anything new, where only the largest companies can produce anything, it is no wonder why some countries just give a middle finger and go about their business.

The Snowden event is a watershed. Before that, people cooperated with the US to ensure that Mickey Mouse stays well protected. However, with the roaring anti-US sentiment kept stoked at an extreme with the daily reports from the Guardian, it is no wonder why other nations have stopped playing ball.

Sounds less like 'piracy', and more like early America, where our forebears had little stake in maintaining the seemingly unjust control of foreign interests, but much interest in creating a large body of works that the public could use to generate culture in this new world.

Very true. And not just foreign interests either. Look at the history of the American film industry who, in the space of ~2 years, moved en mass from New York & New Jersey to Hollywood, at least partially to get as far away as possible from Edison and the heavies he sent out to threaten filmmakers & 'confiscate' cameras - all in the name of patents & intellectual property.

Uhhh...I thought they moved to CA because the old cameras needed a LOT of light and the east coast has a lot of overcast skies in the winter?

As for TFA? I'm personally loving it as it bites the globalists right on the ass. For years many of us have pointed out that globalism is bullshit, it spreads misery to many for the sake of a few but as long as they could keep sending the work overseas to places where they work for pennies while stashing their ill gotten gains in money laundering scams like double du

Yes a few countries have thought about that. If the cost of software is so great and everybody uses pirated copies, why not just drop all gov legal protections.
The gov saves on token enforcement, balance of payments with gov software imports, gets the laws off the books and life goes on.
Nothing changes for the gov, tax base or people. The rest of the world can then claim that country won't enjoy the same protections for their exports of art, software and science.
Local traders sell the software at pric

"and more like early America, where our forebears had little stake in maintaining the seemingly unjust control of foreign interests"

The difference is that "early America" had not yet agreed to any terms and was taking unilateral action, while in the current case the US *agreed to terms* and then reneged so Antigua pursued the remedy *that the US agreed to*.

How can the "need to create culture" possibly be a weak argument? The US Constitution gives the goal of promoting progress in the sciences and useful arts as the very reason why copyright is allowed to exist under US law. Functionally, creating new culture certainly sounds like it falls under that clause -so how can the very thing which, constitutionally speaking, justifies copyright, be a weak argument, one way or the other?
Let's look at which way the arguement really goes, as well. Isn't it more likely, in general, that someone is claing the need to create culture is an argument for diluting or eliminating copyright, as is certainly the case for Antigua in this story? You've given us a couple of axioms, the first definitely true, and the second is technically a matter of opinion, but I will even grant you that second axiom freely - the timeless classics are very seldom matched by any new works. Still, your third term in your chain of logic doesn't really follow from those first two. I think you may be able to make a pretty decent rhetorical case, mind you, I just don't think you got there yet.

said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised

Why does this press release read like an EULA? I mean that is a retarded amount of long words to describe a very simple idea. Why can't they just write it up as "We're bringing back fair use, bitches!"

said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised

Why does this press release read like an EULA? I mean that is a retarded amount of long words to describe a very simple idea. Why can't they just write it up as "We're bringing back fair use, bitches!"

Because this has nothing to do with fair use. Fair use is restricted to non-commercial, educational, etc., use. This is about unrestricted, anything-goes use.

They are allowed to do anything they want with up to a certain amount of US intellectual property. In order to settle the money due them on complaint, Antigua plans to sell US intellectual property (monetisation).

They need a way to track this so they don't go over the allowed amount, and probably a way to see how much people might pay for stuff, like an auction, in case they have a few hundred thousand dollars left on the limit and need to find a product and buyer to fill the gap.

As I figure, there are enough lobbyists that something will happen here. So who's lobbies are larger, the US gambling industry, or the US media industry? Or will they join forces rattling sabers and try force? This will turn out to be an interesting piece of politics.

I'm too tired and drunk to remember or look up where I read this, but;
the US didn't recognize other country's IP until it became one of the countries that could profit from IP. IP isn't some universal law inherent to humanity, it's a social construct that's good for "advanced" countries. When the US didn't fit that category, they were happy to use Europe's inventions with no compensation.

Now, I'm not saying that IP is totally bad or useless, but there's no moral or legal reason why Antigua shouldn't go this route.

Assuming Antigua actually goes through with this, they will likely find that the lure of $21M in gross profit isn't enough to get any real businesses interested (they would no doubt not want to invest in a business that had a gross cap annual net of $10M or so).

It will probably end up being setup by some fly by night folks setting up a website in Antigua for the sole purpose to tick off the US with no intention of actually making money (or paying Antigua any local taxes on the $21M gross). I'm not sure Ant

Yes, because leaving the WTO makes sense. You can hang out with Somalia and Iran! You are why so many people consider America a dick nation. Sign up for international body, ignore its rulings, quit when it isn't just a rubber stamp setup for America.

They wouldn't have to leave the WTO, just remove yourself from the treaty then sign and ratify it again with a signing statement that negates the problem.

The problem is that the US is not government by one federal government. The states have sovereign authority in these matters and the US federal government has no power to act over top of them. Simply put, a signing statement to this effect should have been there to begin with. Someone obviously didn't understand the consequences, the WTO court doesn't unde

They wouldn't have to leave the WTO, just remove yourself from the treaty then sign and ratify it again with a signing statement that negates the problem.

Isn't that kind of like a christian leaving the church only to join up again right away with the caveat that he wants to opt out of the 6th, 7th and 8th commandments? I don't think it works that way. If if opting out of bits and pieces of treaties every time it suits you were as easy as that, making international treaties would be a pretty pointless exercise since everybody could just opt out at will.

The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.

Well, treaties are weird under US law. It could be that, it could require the involvement of the entire Congress (especially if there is enabling legislation), or it might even be something that the President can do unilaterally. Of course, it's probably a political question, so there wouldn't be a bright line rule.

The Senate votes to modify or repeal it, and the President signs off. Same with any time the US does anything with a treaty.

That doesn't solve anything, because even if the US withdraws from the WTO, they cannot prevent Antigua from suspending US copyright within its borders. As I point out above, the WTO is the only thing that makes US copyright law valid anywhere outside the US in the first place. Withdraw from the WTO, and who's going to enforce US copyright law outside the US? Why would any country enforce US copyright law when the US acts to ignore international law in this area.

I suspect that media creation is an area where the US has a huge trade surplus. In a world where the US ignores everyone else's intellectual property law and everyone else ignores US intellectual property law, everyone else wins and the US loses. The US needs the rest of the world to play ball far, far more than everyone else needs the US to do so. This is a fact I think most sovereignty-nuts fail to understand: the US probably exports more of its laws than it imports others. In a world where the US decided not to subject itself to any international law, its own interests would be the ones most impacted.

If Antigua decides to simply disregard IP obligations to the USA then the Department of Commerce could very well have IANA black hole the entire country by deallocating its' IP blocks. A work around may pop up eventually but doing so would certainly make it difficult to use as a piracy haven.

If Antigua decides to simply disregard IP obligations to the USA then the Department of Commerce could very well have IANA black hole the entire country by deallocating its' IP blocks. A work around may pop up eventually but doing so would certainly make it difficult to use as a piracy haven.

all that would happen is the US pirates would use a proxy server, and no one else would deallocate their ip adresses

IANA's administration isn't limited to the USA. It handles IP assignment for all of the regional registries world wide. Granted its enforcement mechanism is limited to "we all agreed to play nice so lets do that" but if a deallocation by IANA/ARIN was picked up by enough networks it would make finding Antigua from any place in the world quite difficult especially if the networks carrying traffic [b]to[/b] Antigua drop it from their routing tables. Such a scenario is extremely unlikely though; Antigua has ha

Right now the members of Congress could not agree that the earth is round, the sky is blue, and the sun is the center of the solar system.

Especially when some of them act as if the Earth were flat [wikipedia.org] and is the center of the Solar System [wikipedia.org] (or even the center of the Universe [wikipedia.org] for hard-liners).
I guess you meant "day time sky above any clouds but within the troposphere as perceived by a fully trichromatic human". They'd argue endlessly on definitions involved in "the sky is blue", and legally formalize an appalling consensus when they eventually got bored enough to move on to other diatribes.

It doesn't matter that the US's internal laws trump its treaty obligations as far as the US is concerned.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned that's the US's problem and it's up to them to deal with it.

As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the US agreed to be bound by WTO agreements. It's violating those agreements and so, as a result, the financial harm that Antigua is suffering is to be compensated by allowing Antigua to violate some of the other conditions Antigua agreed to as part of the WTO.

The US can opt out of the WTO, nobody can stop them, but then Antigua doesn't need to get the WTO agreement to sell US copyrights because the WTO will no longer care about it. The US won't be in violation of WTO agreements because it's not part of the WTO treaty. Antigua won't be violating WTO agreements because the US is not part of the WTO.

The U.S. voluntarily signed a treaty that is enforced by those 'foreign bankers'. The treaty involves obligations on those that signed it, some of which the U.S. is breaking by having this local law in place. The other parties to the treaty are honouring their obligations, yet the U.S. is not. Surely some punishment is in order?

Lol, you seem convinced that by signing a treaty we signed away our rights to legislate within our borders. We didn't, I promise you.

Of course you didn't. What you did sign away was the right, except in certain restricted conditions, to treat foreign companies differently to domestic ones.

You can ban gambling, you can ban alcohol, hell, you can ban guns if you want to, the rest of the world thinks you ought to.

What you can't do is say "only American companies can sell guns to Americans"

Do countries try to push the boundaries, you bet, there are and have been numerous complaints to the WTO about the way China restricts foreign access to its internal markets. But China at least has the nonce to make it a borderline difficult case to prove.

The US is engaged in blatant protectionism - and the WTO doesn't allow protectionism.

Because people with less to lose than to gain wanted to throw off the yoke of their own oppressive government, and create from scratch a more perfect union. It's in the Declaration of Independence for a more thorough refresher.

You seem to think this is a David vs goliath scenario with obvious parallels. Given military funding, it is so much more unbalanced than the revolution was, so crushing is entirely possible.

Yet the other nations in the world would really freak out if we fought Antigua over $21 million

So we aren't allowed to have any laws that might negatively impact the earnings of another nation? I'd prefer to have national sovereignty, thanks.

Sure we are. There's nothing requiring us to honor our international trade agreements. We can break 'em if we like. However, that means that other countries don't have to honor their sides of the bargains either... hence the WTO suspending US copyrights for Antigua and Barbuda. We ignore our obligations and damage them, so they can ignore their obligations to us.

No loss of sovereignty, just a consequence of what essentially boils down to international breach of contract.

Yep, and I think if anything the WTO has been too gentle with the US. Our violation of our agreements has cost Antiqua and Barbudos ~$1B per year, and the WTO has only authorized them to make $21M per year from ignoring their agreement to honor our copyrights.

It's not as though the US seriously harmed Antigua by banning online gambling.

It's interesting that the WTO set the limit on how much profit they can make, not how much they can cost the US in lost sales. Antigua could set up a BitTorrent based all-you-can-download service for say $1/year, with an profit level of say 4%, and make up their $21m in profit by getting 500m subscribers.

Gambling is a $133 billion dollar industry, according to IBIS. Most of it concentrated in North America. I wouldn't be surprised the law is causing some sort of economic effect. I could see online companies using Antigua for a tax haven if the law didn't exist. It not hard to picture.

If we ignore international law to hurt the economy of others, they can (by treaty we signed), do the same in return. What's happening here is the US is requesting Antigua follow the treaty while the US does not. Yay hypocrite!

The problem is that the US federal government does not have the authority to mandate states allow gambling inside their borders or restrict them from allowing it. The US federal government does not have the authority to allow gambling inside a state without that gambling following the state's laws to a tee. The US federal government does not have the authority to ban gambling inside a state. And this is not even bothering getting into the Indi

International law does not and can not override the laws of a sovereign nation.

Your argument is true only if all treaties are invalid. Sovereign nations get to sign treaties. And this doesn't affect sovereignty at all, at least not the US's. Can Antigua ignore US law within its borders? If no, then nobody who crosses the US is sovereign. We have the New World Order, and it is us.

The political structure inside the US isn't the WTO's problem. The WTO only deals with the US government. If the US federal government wasn't capable of enforcing its own adherence to the treaty it shouldn't have signed it in the first place.

It is exactly the WTO's problem. If the treaties are not interpreted to the limitations of the countries involved, they are not valid treaties. In other words, you cannot expect a government, the US or England or France or any other government, to be bound to treaties that they do not have the ability to implement. If you do, you have a treaty that doesn't function and it becomes invalid.

Perhaps invalid is not the word I'm looking to use. Maybe unenforceable Garbage is a better word.

Aren't treaties the law of the land? They are equal to the Constitution, so far as coverage of the states is concerned. Functionally, they are amendments to the Constitution. Thus, they are not subject to the internal fighting you assert. They were deliberately set up that way to get around the dilemma you assert.

Yes, to the extent they are constitutionally allowed and they have jurisdiction.

They are equal to the Constitution, so far as coverage of the states is concerned. Functionally, they are amendments to the Constitution

No they are not. The government was never founded in a way that would allow just the senate and the president to change the relationship the constitutions imposes on the states and federal government. That would require a constitutional amendment which deals

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land"

Between some idiot on the Internet, and the Constitution, I'll trust the Constitution. Treaties are the Supreme Law of the Land. A treaty must be approved by a super-majority of the Senate, and, as the Senate represents the states themselves, not the people in those states, is binding o

But I believe the ruling is flawed insomuch that it doesn't take into account the political structure of the US and instead imposes the rules as if the federal government was an all encompassing concentration of power in the US that all states and citizens are subjects of.

If the US government can not enforce a treaty, they should not have signed it.If international bodies started to take into account the special needs of individual countries we could throw away all treaties. There is always some argument why this one country or that one does need special treatment.

This is especially the case in Europe where most people and governments are subjects of the crown. There are 12 monarchies in Europe currently (including the Vatican city) and while they do not have or exert much political power any more, the concept is still there.

You learn some strange math over there in 'merica.There are 12 monarchies according to you. How many countries are in Europe? (Hint: There are 28 member states of the European Union, and the EU is only part of Euro

Article Six does give the federal government the authority for the former with respect to transactions outside of the states borders.

Not really. The supremacy clause cannot work against the constitutional powers or the 10th amendment.

It can regulate the commerce between states but cannot force a state to participate in a specific form of commerce. This was already explored when the federal government attempted to lower all the speed limits to 55 mph. It got tossed out on a court case due to the 10th amendme

So have your national sovereignty or your international companies making billions of dollars world wide. Part of having an international community is ceding national sovereignty for the greater good. The same way you cede personal sovereignty to the government in return for an organised society.
If I was Antigua I would give all the content away for free so that they don't consume any of their quota and instead sell access to the site.

Not to mention, if we are going to play the "We don't have to fallow any treaties." line of thinking, then Antigua doesn't even need a WTO ruling. Our laws apply inside our borders, not in Antigua. The only reason Antigua would need a WTO ruling is if we are all going to abide by our treaties.

They're not being overruled. The law in the US is allowed to stand and is completely unaffected by this. Instead, because the US has broken a treaty Antigua no long must abide by US Copyrights, which are considered foreign law to Antigua. It doesn't harm democracy that another country is allowed to govern itself. Why should the US law be preferred to Antigua's?

They are saying "repeal this law we don't like, or else we'll inflict as much damage as we possibly can on your economy". That's bad. If they want to play that game, we need to respond in kind.

The US already responded in kind. The US is blocking Antigua businesses from exporting to the US, so Antigua (by the treaty the US signed), is lawful in ignoring US law on Antigua soil. The only one trying to force anything on anyone else is the US.

Well, various nations have had trade wars for a long time. Country A exports something to Country B, A gets upset when B uses import bans or tariffs to prop up its domestic industry or simply keep things out, and then A retaliates by limiting imports from B or worse. Eventually the two countries learn to do without, or they resolve their differences, hopefully peacefully, sometimes violently.

What we're seeing now is a system in which trade treaties are becoming massively multilateral, treaties are tangled u

So, to be clear, the United States democractically elected government passed a law, that applies only to United States citizens. A bunch of foreign bankers have decided that they don't like that law, and so they are overruling it.

I'm sure Slashdot will be thrilled with any decision that hurts intellectual property enforcement, but try to look at what's going on here. It is really, really bad for democracy when elected officials can be overruled by overseas bankers. The United States is right to refuse to comply with the ruling, and should do everything in its power to resist. Our democracy ain't exactly working great, but it's better than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats ruling by decree from overseas.

Just to be clear, the only reason American copyright law has any power at all outside of the United States is because of treaty. If you believe the US government can pass any law they want so long as it only affects its citizens, then Antigua can also pass a law that only affects its citizens that allow them to copy any media they want that originates from the US and resell it for whatever they want without compensation to the original creator. So what's the problem?

This was a post by another Slashdotter that I saved. Didn't
write down who it was though. My bad.

Let's say you and I are sociopathic assholes, so whereas most
people might have some kind of implicit social contract, and a
sense of how people should act decently to one another, we're
jerks and write up and agree to some formal rules. Among these
rules are things like "Neither party will ever hit the other in
the head with a hammer and then steal their wallet while the
victim is incapacitated." Call that the WIPO rule.

We have another rule too. It's "Neither party will ever vandalize
the other's car." Call that the WTO rule.

Then I go and vandalize your car, totally in violation of the
rules. I don't deny it, either. Instead, I explain I had good
reasons to do it. "I really wanted to vandalize your car, and it
looked so vulnerable. I just couldn't help it!" but whether I had
a good reason or not, you claim I broke our agreement. You might
not feel all that hurt about the car, but breaking the agreement.. oh dear. We're sociopaths, but we're not uncivilized, are we?

After my amazing explanation for why I did it, you ask me: "Are
you going to do it again?" and I answer "Yeah, probably. Your car
still does look pretty vandalizable, and I really like vandalizing
cars." You answer "What about our agreement?" and I just shrug.
You ask, "Are our agreements important?" and I shrug again!!

You go see our mutual acquaintances, perhaps some people with whom
I also have some agreements. They're a little concerned to hear I
value our agreements so little. Will their cars be next? They
think it over and say, "Yeah, Sloppy broke his agreement to not
vandalize your car. You should get even."

So you do. You hit me in the head with a hammer and I wake up
without a wallet. You do it openly, too. Our acquaintances nod
with approval, even though you're breaking the agreement now. I
ask, "How can you do that?!?"

You explain: if I think the rules are so important, and I have
such a problem with being hit with hammers, THEN MAYBE I SHOULD
STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S CARS.

I don't know what I'll do. I still really do like vandalizing
cars. I'd like to vandalize your car again, and that other dude
with whom I have a no-vandalize agreement. But I'm not sure I like
this hammers development. OTOH, I don't know, maybe it's worth it.
The hammers hurt and I don't like losing my wallet all the time,
but the cars! Oh, the cars! That's so much fun.

What makes you think US-passed laws have anything to do with Antigua and Barbuda, a foreign nation with its own laws? US laws aren't being "overruled", they simply don't apply outside the US.

There are international organisations such as the WTO and WIPO that set trade rules that both these nations have each agreed to abide by. The US is free to lodge a dispute with them, but they might not get very far considering it was the US who violated those rules [nytimes.com] in the first place.

The US signed a law stating they will enforce US law world-wide (even when that law is self-contradictory). When someone else pulls this on the US, the neo-cons whine about a New World Order and such, but when the US crushes other independent states, it's a Good Thing (tm).

You could say the same thing about Antigua. They passed (or could pass, I don't know) a law that applies to buying and selling stuff in their own country that may be protected by the IP laws of a foreign country. I don't suppose their laws regarding the sale of such would apply in the US. This is why we have treaties.

If you did that, no US patents would be valid anywhere else in the world. Monsanto, MicroSoft, Apple, and Motorola would be dead instantly. Google might stand a small chance, but you'd basically kill the complete USA economy the second this would come into effect.

The US has it's hands tied in this matter. The problem is that the federal government has no authority to require individual states to allow gambling within it's border nor does it have the authority to require states to allow gambling from outside it's border to happen inside the state in violation of the state's laws.

Those limitations should have been put in a signing statement upon ratification. Evidently, no one saw this possibility and didn't do it.

All these federal state divides seem to apply only to the US in case things out there are not going our way, isn't it?

Well, actually, it applies to the US in every matter the federal government is not constitutionally authorized to act in. So there are some exceptions but it is no secret considering that the tenth amendment to the US constitution specifically says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively,

Why shouldn't they? It is a logical progression and just because you do not want to gamble online does not mean that there is not a market for it. They have a right to fill that market. As for allowing the people to download, why not? It is also a logical progression into a market that for some strange reason the people that should be running it have chosen to run down. I cannot understand why more countries do not allow their people more freedom. You talk about greed but you are selective in where you see it. Things that should have quite reasonably have gone out of copyright have, through lobbies in the US government, been kept copyright and you see that as OK and see anyone that sees differently as bad... You are narrow minded. It is only through US corruption that the concept of "piracy" has been created. That corruption should end.

Yeah, I know you will start with all the claptrap about poor starving artists but they are not the ones that benefit from the twisted market that the new guilds have created. Just like the guilds of the middle ages, the concept of "intellectual property" will fail.